As I did last year, before diving into my preseason Established Win Shares Levels roster analyses, I'm going to take a quick look back at last season's. First up is the team-by-team results. For those of you who need a primer on EWSL and my annual roster roundups, go here. A few basic reminders:

*I look at 23 players (13 non-pitchers, 10 pitchers) per team, so an average team should exceed its EWSL due to the fact that most teams these days use between 30-45 players in a season.

*EWSL is an estimate of the established major league talent on a team (adjusted for age) going into a season. It's not a system for predicting the future, although it can be a helpful part of the toolkit (or at least a sanity check) in making predictions of the future.

*EWSL uses a standard figure for rookies (12 WS for rookie everyday players, 6 for rookie bench players, 4 for rookie pitchers (starting or relief)). It does not distinguish between, say, Ryan Zimmerman and Reggie Abercrombie if both are expected to hold everyday jobs. Thus, a team with a lot of high-quality rookies will exceed its EWSL. I'd like to add a non-subjective adjustment for rookie quality, but until I can get Major League Equivalency Win Shares (I don't believe they exist anywhere), I have to rely on the facts that (1) bad rookies rarely get everyday jobs and (2) good rookies often fall on their faces.

That said, basically, my analysis assumes that there are three components to team success: how much established talent is on the preseason roster, how well they perform, and how much production the team gets from guys who supplement those top 23 players with trades, rookies or scrubs. The following table shows the following columns: (1) each team's 2006 EWSL; (2) the actual Win Shares for those 23 players (includes Win Shares earned for other teams, e.g., Bobby Abreu counts with the Phillies); (3) the ratio of column (2) divided by column (1) to show how the 23 players fared relative to EWSL; (4) the team's total actual 2006 Win Shares (i.e., Wins x 3); (5) the team's Win Shares minus those from the top 23 players (in the example above this will include the negative value of, say, Abreu's Yankees Win Shares from the Phillies' "Rest" column); and (6) the ratio of column (4) divided by column (1) to show how the team as a whole fared relative to EWSL. Teams are ranked by that last column:

Team

EWSL

23-Man WS

23-Man WS/EWSL

Total WS

Rest

Total WS/EWSL

Tigers

194.70

249

1.279

285

36

1.464

Rockies

160.96

188

1.168

228

40

1.417

Padres

188.40

209

1.109

264

55

1.401

Marlins

167.71

192

1.145

234

42

1.395

Reds

182.16

209

1.147

240

31

1.318

Twins

224.49

242

1.078

288

46

1.283

Dodgers

208.02

188

0.904

264

76

1.269

Astros

196.82

203

1.031

246

43

1.250

Giants

184.24

198

1.075

228

30

1.238

Mets

235.18

237

1.008

291

54

1.237

Mariners

192.02

216

1.125

234

18

1.219

D-backs

193.86

194

1.001

228

34

1.176

Blue Jays

224.76

241

1.072

261

20

1.161

Phillies

223.25

231

1.035

255

24

1.142

Royals

163.20

135

0.827

186

51

1.140

White Sox

238.09

252

1.058

270

18

1.134

Brewers

199.47

192

0.963

225

33

1.128

Angels

236.79

204

0.862

267

63

1.128

Indians

212.02

207

0.976

234

27

1.104

Pirates

184.21

162

0.879

201

39

1.091

Nationals

196.88

162

0.823

213

51

1.082

Rangers

228.06

214

0.938

240

26

1.052

Cardinals

237.00

210

0.886

249

39

1.051

A's

267.34

245

0.916

279

34

1.044

Yankees

280.18

238

0.849

291

53

1.039

Devil Rays

181.79

142

0.781

183

41

1.007

Orioles

211.61

179

0.846

210

31

0.992

Braves

241.69

193

0.799

237

44

0.981

Red Sox

269.77

246

0.912

258

14

0.956

Cubs

236.80

166

0.701

198

32

0.836

It should come as no surprise that the Tigers, 2006's big story, rate at the top of teams that exceeded expectations, and that the Cubs land at the bottom of the pile. As you can see, the top teams are something of a mix of teams that had great seasons and teams that had very low expectations - I was a little surprised to see the Reds and Rockies listed, for example. The Mets, on the other hand, did pretty much as expected with their roster but did better than average with guys they added on (although I should note that players overall rated at 0.968 of their EWSL, which will factor in as I re-adjust this year's age and rookie adjustments). The Dodgers rate the highest in that regard, with rookies like Andre Eithier helping out, while the Red Sox, White Sox and Mariners got the least help for their original roster. For the most part, teams that were near the top of this list last year tended to be nearer the bottom and vice versa, but the Cubs were down with the dregs for the second year in a row.

Here are the players among those on the preseason 23-man lineups of each team who were the biggest over and underacvhievers (I'm mixing those who were the biggest ups or downs by percentage or raw total):

Team

Best

Worst

Tigers

Justin Verlander, Curtis Granderson, Carlos Guillen

Chris Shelton, Dmitri Young

Rockies

Brad Hawpe, Garret Atkins

Cory Sullivan, Luis A Gonzalez

Padres

Adrian Gonzalez, Mike Cameron

Ryan Klesko, Shawn Estes

Marlins

Alfredo Amezaga, Hanley Ramirez, Dan Uggla

Reggie Abercrombie, Chris Aguila

Reds

Brandon Phillips, Aaron Harang, Bronson Arroyo

Jason LaRue, Chris Hammond

Twins

Francisco Liriano, Mike Cuddyer, Justin Morneau

Carlos Silva, Rondell White, Lew Ford

Dodgers

Takashi Saito, Derek Lowe

Bill Mueller, James Loney

Astros

Trever Miller, Lance Berkman

Eric Munson, Brad Lidge

Giants

Kevin Corriea, Barry Bonds

Mike Matheny, Jason Ellison

Mets

Jorge Julio, Jose Reyes, Carlos Beltran

Anderson Hernandez, Victor Diaz, Victor Zambrano

Mariners

JJ Putz, Joe Borchard, Raul Ibanez

Matt Lawton, Jeremy Reed, Joel Pineiro

D-Backs

Brandon Lyon, Juan Cruz, Brandon Webb

Tony Clark, Jose Valverde

Blue Jays

BJ Ryan, Alex Rios

Gustavo Chacin, Josh Towers

Phillies

Shane Victorino, Ryan Howard, Chase Utley

Aaron Rowand, Alex Gonzalez

Royals

Emil Brown, Mark Teahen

Angel Berroa, Zack Grienke

White Sox

Matt Thornton, Jim Thome, Jermaine Dye

Mark Buehrle, Neal Cotts

Brewers

Gabe Gross, Chris Capuano

JJ Hardy, Derrick Turnbow

Angels

Robb Quinlan, Ervin Santana, Juan Rivera

Jeff Mathis, Bartolo Colon, Darrin Erstad

Indians

Bob Wickman, Travis Hafner

Jason Johnson

Pirates

Ian Snell, Jason Grabow, Freddy Sanchez

Joe Randa, Oliver Perez

Nationals

Mike Stanton, Ryan Zimmerman, Nick Johnson

Jose Guillen, Cristian Guzman, Brandon Watson

Rangers

Mark DeRosa, Gary Matthews

Laynce Nix, Brad Wilkerson

Cardinals

Scott Speizio, Chris Carpenter

Mark Mulder, Jim Edmonds

A's

Frank Thomas, Kiko Calero

Huston Street, Antonio Perez, Rich Harden

Yankees

Chien-Ming Wang, Derek Jeter

Hideki Matsui, Gary Sheffield, Carl Pavano

Devil Rays

Shawn Camp, Mark Hendrickson

Jorge Cantu, Jonny Gomes

Orioles

Chris Ray, Ramon Hernandez

Luis Matos, Brian Roberts

Braves

Oscar Villereal, Brian McCann

Kelly Johnson, Jeff Francouer

Red Sox

Kevin Youkilis, Jon Papelbon

JT Snow, Jason Varitek, Coco Crisp

Cubs

Matt Murton, Bobby Howry

Derrek Lee, Mark Prior, Jerry Hairston

Bear in mind again that these are full-season numbers - Jorge Julio, for example, did his good work in Arizona. Derrek Lee had the worst falloff of any marjor league player, from an EWSL of 27 to 4 Win Shares. It doesn't show here but the Rangers also took big hits from Teixera and Blalock.

To be fair to Matsui & Sheffield, they were injured most of the year. Pavano? Ech.

Posted by: rbj at
February 20, 2007 1:48 PM

Imagining that Darin Erstad was an underperformer takes some work. It sounds like whatever his estimation was, it was almost certainly based on some very old numbers. I didn't expect anything from him besides replacement-level offense.

With regards to the Giants, how can you put Mike Matheny as the biggest under-achievers. He played barely half the season, spending most of it on the DL with a closed head injury. The real under performer that could have been a stable-mate of Jason "What Am I Doing On Baseball Field" Ellison is Armando "Blown Save" Benitez.

with freddie garcia and jamie moyer in the rotatation, and assuming cole hamels is the real deal, the Phils will easily get to 250 win shares as a team this year. Howard, Utley and Rollins will give them 100 win shares on offense and defense; Burrell Rowand and Victorino 45-50 win shares on offense and defense; so that's 150 win shares on the offense-defense side alone. That's assuming almost no contribution from catcher or 3rd. Garcia, Myers, Hamels should all be good for about 10-15 win shares, as should Moyer--and Eaton or Lieber will be the fifth starter, so another five win shares there, conservatively 50-75 win shares from the starters. Tom Gordon picked up 15 win shares as a closer last year and the rest of the pen should pick up another 15 win shares, so the staff should pick up about 100-105 win shares.

That makes about 255 win shares.

If any single pitcher has a breakout year, or if any player other than those named has a breakout year, or if the Phils pick up another player, then the winshares rise.

The point is that their base win share level looks really high right now before the season starts.